As is generally well known, shoes are commonly stored either directly on the floor of the wardrobe closet beneath hanging clothing and other household belongings or in shelf-like shoe racks which are generally placed along the rear wall of such wardrobe closet. Placement of shoes directly on the floor limits the quantity of shoes stored in the closet, wastes the closet space above the shoes beneath the hanging clothing and necessitates undesirable bending in order to retrieve them. Shelf-like shoe racks are typically limited in depth resulting in wasted closet space or obstructed view of shoes stored on the lower shelf.
Some people prefer to store the shoes beneath a conventional frame bed but are limited to placing shoes in a single row in order to easily locate and retrieve a desirable pair of shoes. Additionally, cleaning of the floor space beneath the bed requires each pair of shoes to be relocated individually.
Attempts have been made to improve shoe storage either in the closet or beneath the bed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,746 to Frankel illustrates a rotary shoe rack having a shaft mounted to fixed lower and upper surfaces and a plurality of storage shelves secured to the shaft at spaced intervals. Each shelf is provided with a heel support attached to the shelf surface adjacent the shaft and adapted with a plurality of bushings to hold each shoe fairly securely in place on or against the rail and organize storage of each shoe on the shelf surface. However, the disadvantages of such a shoe rack are in their fixed mounting, in complexity of the heel support and in wasted shelf space due to use of the bushing to govern heel placement in order to organize shoes.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,077 to Miazga illustrates a rotary support or rack mounted to the underside of the bed and having planar lower and upper surfaces and spaced partitions for slidably holding shoe drawers. The use of drawers prevents ease of visually locating a particular pair of shoes.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,082,088 to Wilson teaches a device of turntable construction with fixed dividers formed by a crimping method for organizing shoe storage which can be placed on the floor surface beneath the bed or be mounted to the underside of the bed. Such fixed compartment configuration limits the quantity and sizes of stored shoes.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved shoe storage device which maximizes usable storage space and enables ease of visual shoe identification.